Graphic surveillance footage set the tone in the courtroom Thursday, as jurors relived Philip George’s last moments — from the second he left Club Lexus in the early morning hours of March 7, 2009 to the minutes after he lay dead on the walkway outside.
Four guns were seen flashing on the tape — a couple in the hands of two currently unidentified shooters, a third seen briefly in the hands of one of George’s friends and the fourth in the hands of 22-year-old Richie Fontaine, who stands accused of gunning George down after the two allegedly had a heated exchange earlier in the evening.
As footage from the club’s nine surveillance cameras were rewound and played throughout the second day of Fontaine’s trial in Superior Court, government attorney Claude Walker and Police Cpl. Delbert Phipps narrated the chain of events that led up to George’s death, trying to forge the link between him and Fontaine.
While on the stand, Phipps said he has continuously gone through the footage since the shooting occurred, and was able to point out, from camera to camera, who the suspects were. He showed Fontaine in the club earlier in morning, then highlighted when the first unnamed gunman exited the building and jumped to the floor below followed by a second shooter, and Fontaine in tow.
Jumping back and forth between the camera frames, Phipps explained that the two unidentified gunmen jump to the first floor of the building in which Lexus is located to take up positions on the ground below, while Fontaine appears in another camera frame alone, pacing back and forth on the ramp with the gun in his hand.
Fontaine disappears from view, but soon after he and the two others leave, Philip George, his brother Reuben, and three others were filmed exiting the building.
The first shot is fired when George and his party get a few paces down the ramp, and from there on out, the scenes flashing on camera show an intense shootout, with Reuben George hitting the ground, while Philip George pulls a gun from his friend and starts to fire back.
Though the faces of the shooters are never seen, Philip George’s death is clear on tape, as he falls to the ground in his brother’s arms while the shots continue to blaze around them.
Later testimony from V.I. Medical Examiner Dr. Francisco Landron revealed that Philip George suffered two wounds: one, a bullet that grazed his left shoulder and entered the left side of his neck; and the other, a fatal wound, where the bullet entered through his back and moved upward, causing damage to his left kidney, spleen, pancreas, stomach and heart.
Based on the footage, Phipps testified that the two gunmen and Fontaine — who appeared to leave the club together, only to assemble in strategic positions across the street — were responsible for dealing the fatal blows.
The gunshots also struck others, including local fisherman James C. King, who was trying to run toward the bathroom when a bullet hit him in the back of his head. Testifying Thursday, King said he was told by doctors that the bullet cannot be removed, since it is sitting on a major artery.
But Fontaine’s defense attorney James Bernier Jr. painted a different story, as he flipped through the shots once again while cross-examining Phipps on the stand. By that time, the jurors appeared to know who was who on the tape, and nodded their heads repeatedly when Bernier asked Phipps an identification question.
Bernier questioned Phipps’ assertion that Fontaine was "with" anyone that night, since many of the shots show him alone or briefly talking with the two unidentified shooters. Those men were outside first, guns in hand, and could be seen below the building, waiting in the parking lot before Philip George and his party came out, he said.
He also said it was a possibility, since George and crew left quickly after Fontaine and the others did, that there was something already going on outside, so everyone inside the building was trying to get out before they got hurt.
The video also doesn’t show where Fontaine went after he left the ramp, Bernier pointed out.
"And isn’t it possible," he asked Phipps, "that if Mr. Fontaine pulled out his weapon, it was in response to the two others that appeared to have pulled out their weapons before him?"
While Bernier began to lay his foundation for self-defense — or what he described in his opening statement Wednesday as a "case of mistaken identity" — Walker continued his push to seal the case against Fontaine by recalling a key eyewitness to the stand.
An important part of the government’s case centers on a police statement made by Philip George’s brother, Reuben, who testified Wednesday, but failed to identify Fontaine as the shooter.
On Thursday, presiding trial Judge James S. Carroll III said he would be granting the government’s motion to treat Reuben George as a hostile witness, which allowed Walker to get into the particulars of the police statement.
In the seven-page document — which Phipps said later that he wrote while Reuben George narrated — the scene is described much like it is shown on camera. The only additions were a description of an exchange between Fontaine and Philip George earlier in the evening over some money owed by Fontaine and a positive identification of Fontaine as the shooter.
"When I came out the bathroom, I saw Philip peeping out the door," Reuben George said in his statement. "I saw Richie on the ramp of the club with a pistol in his hand. When he saw us coming outside, he went across the street and began to open fire on us from across the street."
Reuben George maintained Thursday that he recalled talking to police about the shooting, but doesn’t recall given them a written statement, or seeing the officer writing while he was talking. Under questioning from Bernier, George also said that he "stood by" his testimony on Wednesday.
Other testimony given Thursday revealed that 94 shell casings were recovered from the scene that night — one on the ramp where Philip George’s body lay for several minutes before it was taken away by the ambulance, more than 30 in the parking lot at the front of the building, and the bulk found across the street.
The trial continues Friday morning.
